The First Angry Man
Presented by the Lafayette Library and Learning Center Foundation
In collaboration with Renegade Humanities

Join us for a film screening and conversation with the director Jason Cohn and Lafayette's own Laney Whitcanack, moderated by Ariella Markowitz, KQED contributing audio journalist.

The First Angry Man looks at Howard Jarvis, whose 1978 "tax revolt" ballot initiative, Proposition 13, changed everything in California and beyond. The film unpacks the dramatic campaign, its quirky characters and its enduring consequences, exploring how the great public ambitions of postwar America collapsed into Reagan era parsimony and the permanent tax revolt.

Now, as Californians will soon be asked to vote on new ballot initiatives in November, what can we learn from this story about making informed choices?

Featuring lively archival footage and interviews with first-hand witnesses to the events, including Governor Gray Davis, Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz and anti-tax firebrand Grover Norquist, The First Angry Man underscores the potential and the pitfalls of California’s system of direct democracy and how it has impacted the last four decades of American political life.
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Jason Andrew Cohn is the award-winning director, producer and writer of numerous documentaries, including The First Angry Man, which was a finalist for the Library of Congress Lavin/Ken Burns Prize for Film and EAMES: The Architect and the Painter, which won a George Foster Peabody Award. He co-produced Arwen Curry’s recent American Masters documentary, Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin.

Ariella Markowitz is an audio journalist with KQED, currently producing "The Speaker," about how Nancy Pelosi changed the face of power in America. She has worked on podcasts with Michael Lewis ("Against the Rules") and Apple ("Time to Walk") for Pushkin Industries. For The Lever, she produced the weekly news podcast "Lever Time" and the series "Tax Revolt", about the unlikely revolution that hijacked American politics.

Laney Whitcanack is a Lafayette Library and Learning Center Foundation Trustee and independent consultant. She was also Chair of the Lafayette School District's 2026 Measure H campaign and former CEO of Coro, Northern California.

The Renegade Humanities Collective exists to defend and strengthen community-based humanities programming and promotes opportunities for people to engage in shared learning and dialogue. The collective is made up of independent filmmakers and filmgoers, librarians and library patrons, museum professionals and museum goers, teachers and students, and others who care deeply about the future of the humanities in California and beyond. Find them @renegadehumanities.

This program is made possible in part thanks to our Program Sponsor Orchard Nursery.

The First Angry Man, Documentary

Lafayette Library and Learning Center Foundation